FIU School of Music presents Handel’s Messiah and More!

December 7, 2012 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm

Event Navigation

On Friday December 7 at 7:30 pm the FIU School of Music presents its holiday concert at the Wertheim Performing Arts Center Concert Hall at the FIU School of Music with the combined forces of the FIU Symphony Orchestra directed by Grzegorz Nowack, the Concert Choir directed by Mary Adelyn Kauffman, the Master Chorale directed by John Rose, and the FIU Collegium Musicum directed by David Dolata in a program that features celebratory Baroque music to get you into the holiday spirit. The FIU Sackbut Quartet heralds the beginning of the concert with the glorious sounds of Baroque trombones and chamber organ in Miami’s premiere performance of Venetian composer Biagio Marini’s Canzona Terza followed by Johann Schelle’s oratorio Von Himmel hoch, also a local premiere. Schelle, one of Bach’s predecessors at Leipzig’s Thomaskirche had a profound effect on the young Bach’s approach to concerted vocal music that is clearly evident in Bach’s cantatas and larger works such as his Christmas Oratorio. Von Himmel hoch is a grand concerted sacred work in German featuring vocal solos and choruses, all accompanied by Baroque instruments such as the theorbo, sackbuts, recorders, chamber organ, and bowed strings, which also perform numerous instrumental sonatas throughout the oratorio. Following a brief intermission, the second half of the concert is dedicated to all your favorite selections from Handel’s Messiah—familiar arias, sinfonias, and concluding with, of course, the “Hallelujah Chorus” to cap off a splendid evening of musical holiday cheer.